Cost Counting
by Pedellea
Summary: It's a wartime choice, to choose one harm from another. A re-imagined version of the events following the Season 1 finale (1x08).


**TITLE:** Cost Counting

**AUTHOR:** Pedellea

**SUMMARY:** It's a wartime choice, to choose one harm from another.

**SPOILERS:** Into the Fire

**DISCLAIMER:** X Company belongs to Mark Ellis, Stephanie Morgenstern, Temple Street, Pioneer Stillking Kft and CBC Television.

**AUTHOR'S NOTES:** I wrote this shortly after watching the season 1 finale "Into the Fire" when it aired, and then let time slip by and the series conclude. It's now a re-imagined vision of how season 2 could have rolled out. Thanks for reading.

-:-:-:-

In the distance he hears his name. Hasn't heard it in nine days. He opens his eyes. He wants blue, but clanging metal sends blinding reds, greens, oranges flashing everywhere. Gunshots ring not far behind, rattling inside his skull, kicking up memories.

Fireworks, smearing whiskey on a dead man's face, throwing him out the window.

Faces of girls in white dresses, blonde, blonde, blonde. The man he shot, soundless. Bloody sheets.

Young man, slumped, throat slit. Run, run, run to the next man, dead from a pill.

Memories are hard to hold in without sleep.

Alfred palms his ears, shuts his eyes, hangs his head. He can't take it in anymore.

The pain in his shoulder explodes suddenly, the one they wrenched. He gags on the stench of mud filling his nose. Pain is always mud. The ground shifts beneath him swiftly. He's not going back up on the hook, hung like a side of meat. He swings wildly, catches skin and bone. An arm catches his own firmly, and he starts to yell, sharp and silver.

"Whoa, easy, easy."

He stops moving, stops the sound coming out from his mouth, and the ground stops too. Familiar voice. Thick, accented. Not German, but a Londoner. Tight curly hair, musky clothes. Arm around officer's throat, dropped like a flour sack.

"Look at me, Alfred." Hand around jaw, sparks of white. "Look here."

In the fog beyond the sparks, a face swimming. Aurora, grim-eyed. The gun in her hand. Tears. The smell deepens, fills his lungs, twists his stomach. The hand on his jaw tightens.

"Alfred." Her eyes tell fear, say _focus_. "Can you walk?"

He's been dragged around so much lately he's forgotten. His head tilts side-to-side. Her lips press together, her eyes cast up, slight nod.

A hiss pours out his mouth white hot as a hand finds the spot under his bad shoulder. He grabs his shoulder with his good arm. Sends more sparks up his eyes.

"It's dislocated." Harry's voice, clipped, concerned.

"Gotta move. Be gentle."

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The colours are too loud, drilling through his head. He can't breathe and can no longer budge.

Something shoved in his ears. More shots, but muffled. Pulled up from his good side, stumbling mud legs. Lights flash intense. Pushed from behind, rushing left of door, down the row of cells. Empty-eyed prisoners. Their white screams. His white screams. Another nudge from behind, stumbling still. _Green light! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go! _Tripping, falling forward, kneeing the floor. Bang! Bang! Yanked up by his neck. White sparks. Dodging right. Pushed down. Bang! Bang! Symphony of colours, his head about to blow. Mud pain, up again. Legs like jelly, but still the ground shifts unsteadily beneath. The motion is making him sick.

Suddenly down. Air sharp, clean, too white. He takes it all in, only for a moment. He'll remember it all, but only when he wakes again.

-:-

He's asleep, but somehow is still shaking, mouth clamped, body curled. Harry shrugs off his jacket for Alfred, adding to Neil's and her own, but Aurora can tell the shaking is not from the cold.

The car stops, and their French compatriot turns his head, nods once.

Aurora reaches a cautious hand toward Alfred's knee. He jerks, eyes opening wide. The first time they touched him he lashed out, left Neil with a scratch and a fresh bruise in the jaw. God knows what these past nine days have done to him.

She sighs and looks right into his eyes.

"It's okay, Alfred. You're-"

_Not safe just yet_, Aurora stops and thinks. In a world of deception, she wants to kick the habit of lying where she can.

"We're - going home."

He stares at her, eyes seeing something beyond her. Then his eyes squeeze shut, head drops low, disappears into a fog that only he knows.

Aurora frowns. Alfred is broken in several places - she's sure by the way his breathing is hitched - but that's the least of anyone's concerns. It's really the secrets he's given and taken in.

Another sigh, and Aurora turns back to the task at hand. Load him up, take him home.

Sort the mess out as it comes.

-:-

He's staring way past the fields again.

She thought bringing him back home would make him safe. Now she knows no world is safe from harm.

She thinks it'd do Alfred much good to get away from the camp, at least for a while. Duncan thinks the same, but the risks of rejoining civilian life right now is too big a gamble. They also need all the intelligence he's gathered from the inside, and so there has been daily interviews in the past few days, to which a nurse wheels him in and out of, like clockwork. Alfred knows and has seen too much.

It's a wartime choice, to choose one harm from another. Aurora agreed to these kinds of costs and signed her life on them months ago.

Doesn't mean she can't feel the weight pressing into her shoulders every day, every hour.

He hasn't noticed her enter the room. She sighs and clears her throat lightly. He tenses for a moment but doesn't turn. She takes it as permission to enter, and seats herself in the chair by his bed. He shifts his slinged up shoulder and winces.

Aurora studies him for a moment. Hair tussled against a pale, bruised face. Limbs lined thinly against the cotton blanket. Shoulders sagged, tired.

She turns her eyes away out into the training fields, burned and ashamed of what she made happen.

But at least Alfred is alive and back in Canada, and not shot by her hand and dead in the middle of occupied France.

"It's expensive."

Caught off guard, Aurora looks sharply at Alfred. He gazes at her for a moment, searching, before looking back out.

"Been counting the rounds." Another quick glance. "Helps me -" A gulp. "Helps me focus."

It startles Aurora, realizing she doesn't even register the gunfire anymore. She hears them now that she's paying attention, but it sounds commonplace. Normal.

"Twenty-three in the last minute. That's one thousand three hundred and eighty in an hour. Here alone. In the world then - the world-" A heavy sigh. "It's a lot."

His eyes darken, remembering.

"Was going back," his head shifts right twice, "_there_. Just now. There weren't a lot." Another gulp. "Day one, three. Day two, two. Day three -" He stops, eyes glistening. "My cell mate. Just one. Day four," a shaky sigh, "a break. Day five, six, seven, I -" His voices hitches. "I was removed. For questions. Then I don't know what-"

Alfred drops off then, eyes lost to invisible ghosts. Aurora finds tears in her own eyes. She doesn't stop them from rolling down.

"Just six, whole time I was there."

"But six too many," Aurora found herself saying.

He stiffens, gives a tiny nod.

"Never saw the bodies. But always heard the screams."

His eyes are back at it, moist and gazing at the fields. Aurora says nothing more, stares out the window along with him.

Let the man have his peace where he can.

-:-

The sessions are hard. He remembers everything. And nothing seems useful.

Georg. Max. Konrad. Guards on shift in the first three days. Klaus. Lukas. Rainer. Guards on shift during the rest. Iron door creaks every two, three hours, on schedule. Other times, the door opens with sounds of scuffles, always escalates into shouts and screams. Half the time followed by a gunshot.

Cells, small, crowded. Two to most cells. His cellmate, Etienne. Forty-three, shopkeeper of books. Four children, wife Pauline. A naturally beautiful woman: blue eyed, dark haired, small lips. Used a cover story in the small talk with Etienne, just like Tom taught. Convincing enough. No questions asked. Etienne shot on day three.

Meals, meagre. One roll, half bowl of thin soup. Watered down, acidic. Tasted grey and angry, but also tired. Trays clatter on the concrete floor every meal hour like fireworks. Fifteen times in total. Always made his head ring loud with purple, pink.

Building, simple layout. Only saw about half, maybe less. Interrogation room in the basement on the south end, soundproof. Cage in the middle, wrought iron. Lit with a 40 watt bulb. Buzzed and buzzed like razor blades. Single wooden chair on the side. Browned with old blood spatters, saliva spots. Room smelled like moist earth. The smell hurt. Really bad.

And now, Alfred shakes his head lightly, presses a palm to his forehead, eyes closed. On the way back from interview today, the report on the leftmost desk in the communications room read: _Interior bombing._ _Prison_ _irreparably damaged. No survivors. _He shifts stiffly in his bed.

"Report said the prison - it blew -"

He looks up and saw Aurora staring at him, eyes baffled but head nodding slightly.

Details. He has a mountain of details. Kilimanjaros full. All burned up with the prison to the ground.

He pounds a fist on the side table. His shoulder throbs a muddy stench, and he watches his fist shake red.

"What good could what I've seen - blown up -"

"_Alfred_."

Her tone is firm, and he tastes port wine and brandy. Sharp, bittersweet. He listens.

"Your pieces aren't worthless. We take them. We put them together."

She clamps one hand on his good arm and white sparks a little in his eyes. _Danger. Excitement._

"A team came back from there," she motions up with her head, "yesterday. We used _your _descriptions. We got three of our own back, from another prison close by."

She sighs urgently, eyes glistening. She puts her second hand closer to his elbow, close like a distinct bell ringing an F major chord.

"We found him." She draws closer, the ringing louder. "Rene. Based on what you told us."

Tidal patterns. Bridge position. Calendar of moons and suns. Her bright face.

"He's alive?"

"Just like you said he would be."

Alfred draws his own sigh. All the knots in his head, coming to something. Aurora suddenly laughs, pulls her hands away.

"He's _alive_."

Alfred can't help but smile, though not quite feeling the weight of the joy.

"Thank you."

Her broad smile is enough to colour the room with an E flat chord. It's a softer blue, tinged with purples and whites. Still, he doesn't want it to end.

-:-

"Sir," she said slowly. "With an operation like this..."

"We'll need him. I know."

Aurora looked into the fields, taking in the gunshots, the clouds, and the sun beyond.

"I can talk to him -"

"He hasn't been cleared yet."

Aurora nodded, brow stitched in both disappointment and relief. Alfred can still be of great help here on base.

"He can work communications now. Harry's showed -"

"That would be too slow."

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Sinclair, confused.

"So," she spoke slowly, "what is the protocol here?"

Sinclair pursed his lips and sighed.

"It's a huge risk putting Alfred back out there. He is an important asset and the former rules, which you _broke_, still apply. Maybe more than ever. It's a risk I am uncomfortable taking."

He clasped his hands together, drawing them to his mouth for a moment.

"But we need his agile abilities on the road. The radio is quick, but not quick enough. Interception is a huge flaw in the system. A man, on the other hand. _The_ man..."

Sinclair paused again.

"It worked before. It will work again."

Aurora nodded again. Cost counting is half the business of war, but results never wash out the unease. She looked up.

"The matter of clearance, sir."

Sinclair met her eyes with a curt nod.

"Well. It's up to me."

He sighed deeply.

"And I think it's best if we left it up to him."

So Aurora found herself in front of Alfred again, in the men's barracks where he was well enough to go since two days ago. She watched as his eyes shifted away from her gaze, seemingly contemplating the present and what's to come.

"I'm with you," she spewed after an uncomfortable half minute passed. "Whatever you choose."

He looked up then, clouds clearing a little from his eyes, a small smile on his lips.

"You know, it's not so hard to choose. I choose you." He smiled wider. "And the team. I can't imagine not using my gift," he paused, "if it can still make a difference."

"It'll make more than just a difference."

Aurora cupped his hand into hers.

"You've saved lives. You'll save again. I know it."

Alfred's eyes were uncertain, hopeful.

"I'd like to see if that'll hold true.

**END**


End file.
